2015.01.25 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Rahel Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen, Suhrkamp, 2014, 451pp., €20, ISBN 9783518295878.
Reviewed by Andreas Niederberger and Tobias Weihrauch, University of Duisburg-Essen
Jürgen Habermas has introduced his theory of communicative action as an attempt to overcome the aporias of the first generation of critical theory. Adorno's and Horkheimer's writings showed -- according to Habermas -- that any point of reference used to criticize the current situation turns out to be part of the problem. The proletariat had voted for the Nazis, modernist culture in its most avant-garde forms served to reconcile people with their capitalist living conditions, and one could even read the seemingly least practical and abstract philosophical theories as preparing and maintaining a form of subjectivity that dominates nature, oneself and others. In Habermas' view the task of the next generations of critical theory was, thus, to. . .